As March is Women's History Month, I thought you might be interested in a new title soon to be released: MOTHER JONES: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, by Elliot J. Gorn (Hill and Wang; 0-8090-7093-6; $27.00; hardcover; 3/17/01; Biography/American History)

Her rallying cry was famous: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." Mother Jones (1837-1930) was a celebrated organizer and agitator, the very soul of the labor movement in the early twentieth century. At coal strikes, steel strikes, railroad, textile, and brewery strikes, Mother Jones was always there, stirring the workers to action and enraging the powerful. Mother Jones was on the brink of old age when she began her public life, and her early years have long been shrouded in obscurity. Elliott J. Gorn has uncovered them here, as he not only interprets her career as an agitator but also looks back at her emigration from Ireland, her work as schoolteacher and dressmaker, the tragic early deaths of her husband and children, and the "lost years" when she faded from view altogether.

Ten years ago, women took over, and now they are busily changing everything, from schools and language to women's and men's thinking. Meanwhile, not all men are pleased with this kinder, gentler world. Harmony, an underground men's movement, is planning a violent uprising to put women back in their place. Cheryl Benard's deftly comic novel gives us a chance to envision a world designed by women and to reflect on how such a world would differ from our own.

When the twelve-year-old narrator of Our Twisted Hero moves from Seoul to a small provincial town and enrolls in the local school, he's confident that his big-city sophistication will establish him as a natural leader. But he immediately falls victim to a charismatic and corrupt class monitor, who uses fear and violence to keep the other students under his mysterious spell and to assure his own supremacy in the school's social hierarchy. As the narrator attempts first to seek justice and then to inspire his fellow students to revolt, he finds himself in a fierce battle not just for his rights, but for his soul. Soon he has set in motion an unexpected and unstoppable chain of events.

This riveting allegory, in the tradition of Lord of the Files, starts as a simple power play within a children's classroom, but turns into a chilling tale about the lust for power and desperate need for acceptance that reside within all of us.

Caprice Garvin holds a B.A. in English from Rutgers University and an M.F.A. in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently working as a publicist for FSB Associates, a leading internet book marketing company.